NowNS: Annapolis Cider focuses on quality over volume (Video)

Sean Myles and Gina Haverstock didn’t need to start a small business in Wolfville — they already had great careers they loved.

But they’d both been strong supporters of the local food movement and the Ivany Report inspired them to start a venture that would support local agriculture.

“We wanted to be active participants, not passive observers,” says Myles. “We knew this is what our community needed and we felt we were capable of doing it.”

Haverstock has been making wine at Gaspereau Vineyards for about a decade, and Myles is a professor in Dalhousie’s Faculty of Agriculture and breeds apples at the Kentville research station. So they put their two specialties together — fermentation and apples — and decided they were ideally suited to open a cider business.

They played around with the idea and put their plan into action last year. While both maintained their full-time jobs, they say they “jumped in head-first” and officially launched Annapolis Cider in April.

Myles says they’ve had “pretty much all ‘good’ problems” so far, like way more traffic than they were expecting. Everything is sold out of their shop on Main Street — not because no one else is interested but because they run out before they can think about approaching a single restaurant, bar or liquor store.

“The support from the community has been amazing,” says Myles. “We’ve sold more than 35,000 litres of cider in a town of about 3,500 people, and more than 20,000 people went through the shop over the summer.”

The local apples are pressed just down the street at Stirlings, and Myles says everything has no additives or artificial flavours.

“People connect with that and it’s very encouraging,” says Myles. “It’s a great sign for the future of our community because it means other people can get into the value-added agriculture game.”

They conducted months of blind taste tests to determine their taste profile and compare the product to other brands, and Annapolis Cider wound up officially being an “ultra-premium product.” Myles credits that to Annapolis Valley’s incredible variety of apples, and says it wouldn’t be possible to make a product like this just anywhere.

“I had relationships with growers because of my research, so we had access to all these great heirloom varieties,” says Myles. “We don’t go for volume — we go for quality.”

He promises Annapolis Cider will be available through NSLC in 2017 and hints there are new products coming soon that focus on the heirloom apple varieties. Even with so many plans on the horizon, he and Haverstock continue to juggle dual careers. He says their business mentors gave the excellent advice of making sure they were working “on” their business, not “in” the business.

“If you’re busy at the bottling line, you’re not going to be able to think about growing your business,” he says. “We have two full-time employees, Melanie and Katie, and they’re just as committed as we are.”

Myles says it was an honour to be nominated for the Now! Nova Scotia Good News Awards by none other than Hans Christian Jost, of Jost Vineyards, and the Tatamagouche Brewing Company.

“He’s probably overseen more litres of beverage from Nova Scotia fruit than anyone else,” says Myles. “He’s been a really great mentor and there’s never been a time I couldn’t pick up the phone and ask questions.”

He says the product cuts through all the demographic barriers because it’s a favourite for everyone, from older ladies to “young craft beer dudes full of tats.” So the plan is to break down barriers between wine, cider and beer by exploring co-fermentation of different local products — like how they’ve already mixed peaches with peppercorns, and rhubarb with ginger.

The $20,000 prize would go a long way towards researching different ideas, trying various methods and fermenting small batches to see what works.

But even if they don’t win, Myles says he and Haverstock are proud to be making a difference in the town they love.

“We were just small business owners taking out a massive loan and we didn’t know how things were going to go,” says Myles. “When people come along and say ‘You’re doing a great job,’ it means a lot to the whole team — and it converts doubt to optimism and confidence.”